Previous research has shown that heavy drinkers are likely to drink more alcohol when subjected to social stressors, and that alcoholics are most likely to relapse under conditions of interpersonal or intrapersonal stress. Therefore, this study proposes to assess the effects of a stress management training program on the subsequent daily rates of alcohol consumption of heavy social drinkers. Heavy social drinkers will be selected from university class by use of a Drinking Habits Questionnaire, and then screened for potential alcoholism or serious health hazards. Twenty will be assigned to a stress management training program, twenty to "pseudotherapy," and twenty to no treatment. The stress management training program will involve teaching progressive muscle relaxation and cognitive restructuring techniques as active coping skills, providing practice in applying them while subjects are vividly imagining recent stressful experiences, and teaching a mediation method to reduce general stress levels. The pseudotherapy is designed to control for the expectation of beneficial results and will involve a credible but ineffective discussion group. All sixty subjects will keep daily records of their alcohol and cigarette consumption, and of their overall moods. A battery of personality tests will be given before and after the training period to determine the effects of training on various personality traits associated with anxiety and stress, and all subjects will be shown a stressful film while being monitored by a polygraph to determine the effects of stress management training on their physiological responsees to a stressor. If this project has favorable results, it may be applicable in prevention programs with nonalcoholic heavy drinkers. Also, future research would be done incorporating stress management training into treatment programs for problem drinkers and assessing its effects on subsequent relapse rates.